Operation Bamboozle

by Derek Robinson

  But he had. Jensen TransAmerica’s camera, hidden in a briefcase, had taken his photograph, head cocked, eyes smiling. It was a good likeness.

  5

  Luis took Othello for a walk in the hills, but Othello took one look at the stony slope and stopped.

  “That is a sullen look,” Luis said. “You are a basset. You don’t know how to look sullen.” He sat on a rock, and Othello collapsed his legs and sprawled on his belly. “Listen to me, dog. Waiting at the top of this path is a lady basset of astonishing beauty. She is this month’s centerfold in Dog’s Life. She has a sirloin steak, medium-rare, that she wishes to share with you, and a bowl of Chateau Lafitte, not perhaps the best year, but who are you to sniff at the offer? After that, you two can romp in the heather …” Othello was asleep. “I seem to be losing my touch,” Luis said. “A supreme con artist, humbled by a basset.” He sat and watched the big airliners, as tiny as toys from this distance, making their approach over the ocean to LA international airport. The afternoon grew cool. He picked up Othello and went indoors to wake Julie.

  They were halfway to Beverly Hills, crawling in rush-hour traffic, when he said, “I forgot to tell you. We’re not really broke. I keep a little mad money for emergencies. There’s a thousand dollars in a secret part of my wallet. Two five-hundred-dollar bills.”

  “Well, whoopee,” she said. “Remind me to buy milk for your lonely cornflake.”

  THINK CAVIARE

  1

  Ten cars were parked outside the house: Buicks, Oldsmobiles, Chryslers, Lincolns. Nothing foreign. The Mafia always flew the flag and bought American. Everything except olive oil. And maybe pasta. Well, you are what you eat.

  Vito had a good log fire going. There was a bar and a barman, neither doing any business. Vito’s ten men stood in groups of two or three, quietly talking. Julie had never seen so much Mafia top brass in one room, and she took a good long look. They were soberly dressed, coat and pants to match, everything restrained, no flaring neckties with naked blonds painted on them. They looked like a bunch of vice-presidents from a corporation in the Fortune 500, and in a sense they were. “Last year we out-grossed Pepsi,” she murmured to Luis. “This year, Dr. Pepper. Next year, the world.” He grunted. The chairman of the board was signaling to them.

  “No introductions, no drinks, no peanuts,” he said. “No chairs, either. Everybody stands. Dad taught me that. Give a guy a seat and the meeting lasts five times as long. Okay. Now listen. These people are not nice people. They may look like a bunch of Presbyterian ministers waiting for a bus, but the ten grand each man has brought was earned by blood and tears, and he’d as soon strangle his mother as lose it. Then he’d strangle you. Or maybe he’d do you first. Whichever’s nearest. Did I tell you these people are not nice people?”

  “You did.”

  “Yeah. Now make your pitch.” Vito clapped his hands, once. The room fell silent.

  “Ukraine,” Luis said. “Or, if you like, the Ukraine.” Some men moved to get a better view of him. Julie drifted back and got lost. “We all know it’s in the Soviet Union, but what else? Big or small? Well, it’s bigger than France. Much bigger than California. Nearly as big as Texas. Rich or poor? It’s got the richest agricultural land in Russia. Richer than Kansas and twice the size. Got coal. More coal than anyplace else in Russia. Got some heavy industries too, lots. And the climate down south? Near the Black Sea? Think of Florida. Think French Riviera. Think caviar, for God’s sake. That’s where it comes from! So Ukraine has been blessed. Is there anything else to be said for it? Yes, there is. Ukraine is the most westerly republic in the Soviet Union, which makes it the nearest to Europe. It’s still part of Russia but do they speak Russian? No, they speak Ukrainian, similar but different. They have their own Ukrainian currency. A lot are Cossacks. They don’t much like Moscow. Now, add all that together, and here’s what you get: a rich corner of the Soviet Union that’s perfect for an American clandestine operation.” That was a good place to stop. He cleared his throat. “A little ginger ale would be welcome.” Vito pointed. The barman poured a glass.

  “Clandestine operation to do what?” Nicky Zangara asked.

  “I told you that already,” Vito said.

  “They need to hear it from him.”

  “To do three things.” Luis sipped his ginger ale. “First, we infiltrate Ukraine. Second, we penetrate its economy. Third, we rob the country blind.” Everyone straightened up. Their eyes widened. They inhaled more oxygen. Screw the travelogue; now the main feature had begun. “It’s happening already,” Luis said. “Ukraine is being squeezed like a ripe lemon, and the juice flows in a steady stream that builds to a wide river. What makes this operation special is that the Ukrainians themselves are doing all the work. They don’t know it. They just pay, and pay, and pay. Like all good ideas, this one is amazingly simple.”

  “So amaze us,” somebody said.

  “Hey, loosen up,” Vito said. “The reason you’re standing is to keep you from sittin’ on your brains. This is the future you’re listenin’ to. We move or we die, like the shark. Get your brains in gear, for Chrissake.”

  “Here’s the guts of Operation Bamboozle,” Luis said. “You’re thinking: dumb name? Good, good. We’re not out to impress, we’re out to make a killing, and we’re halfway there. Here’s how. The KGB runs everything in Ukraine, including the state lottery, which is big, huge. They don’t have I Love Lucy in Ukraine, no Sid Caesar doing Your Show of Shows, no horse operas like The Lone Ranger, definitely no Marilyn Monroe in The Moon is Blue, in fact no excitement except the lottery. KGB General Bolshevik—that’s his codename—runs it. He’s crooked, he skims from the top in a unique Ukrainian way. Each month, when the winners are announced, he arrests one, has him shot and keeps the money.”

  They all laughed. Julie began to relax. At first they hadn’t taken to Luis: too suave, too European, too lucid. Now they were starting to like him a little. Only a little. And while they might like him, would they believe him?

  “Not subtle, but simple,” Luis said. “Okay. We have agents in Ukraine. They discovered the general’s corruption. He knows we know. He also knows that if Moscow knows, he gets a bullet in the head. So now we have him in our pocket.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?” someone asked.

  “Ah …” Luis took a swig of ginger ale. “Come with me to Ukraine and you might meet them. Or you might not.”

  “It’s clandestine, for Christ’s sake. You heard him,” Vito said. “You expect business cards?”

  “General Bolshevik now runs two lottery networks in Ukraine,” Luis said. “One sells genuine tickets, the other sells our counterfeit tickets. The general hires the extra lottery salesmen and he puts them into the extra ticket booths. We provide the fake tickets. We get all the income from the second network. All of it. It gets transferred to our account with the Zurich International Union Bank, Switzerland. And if anyone is surprised that the KGB sends funds to western capitalist hideouts, then I’m surprised you’re surprised. The KGB is patriotic but it likes dollars as much as any other Red who wants to destroy the US but not yet, not before he’s had a chance to take his wife shopping at Saks and Tiffany and Nieman-Marcus.”

  That earned a few chuckles.

  “So the payroll’s in Zurich,” Nicky said. “Where’s it go from there?”

  Luis spread his arms generously. “Where you will.”

  “Okay, bar’s open,” Vito said. “Then we get down to the technical stuff. What’s your poison?” he asked Julie. She wanted a J&B on the rocks. “Excellent choice,” he said. For a moment she was charmed by his boyish smile and his high school gallantry. Then she remembered: he was thirty, and he killed people. Maybe he enjoyed doing it; he’d enjoyed mentioning the B strain. When he came back with her J&B, their fingers touched. She took a good swig of whisky, too much, too fast, and coughed. He was watching, still smiling. “That’ll be the cyanide,” she said.

  He thought about that for a couple of seconds too long.
She nodded goodbye and moved nearer the fire. Primitive instinct: when threatened, seek warmth and light.

  Alcohol oils the wheels. In the talk around the bar, Luis often heard the word counterfeit, so he began with that.

  “I won’t insult you with a lot of flim-flam about forged paperwork,” he said. “For one thing, I don’t know a lot, and for another, your experience far exceeds mine. But although I don’t know much, I do know a man who knows more than all of us put together. He’s in Milan, Italy, and he can counterfeit any piece of paper perfectly. He prints our fake Ukrainian lottery tickets, prints them by the ton. The Allies used him during the Hitler war to …” Luis stopped. He clenched and opened a fist. “No. Forget I told you that. Not relevant.”

  But the Milan link had opened a window on Operation Bamboozle and questions followed. How was the stuff shipped? Where? A ton of paper: how many crates was that? Do you truck it into Ukraine? What about customs? And unsold tickets, what happens to them? This second network—do the sellers know the tickets are phony? What about the first network, aren’t they pissed about the competition? Cutting into sales? How old is your KGB general? Does he drink? What’s your turnover? Gross? Nett? Any taxes? Profit? Things are going good, huh? So why d’you need a cash boost from us?

  “To expand,” Luis said. “So far, the second network covers only half Ukraine. To go national we need funds to prime the pump.”

  “Why?” Nicky demanded. “You’ve got your KGB general and your phony tickets. What else d’you need?”

  “Last time I counted,” Luis said, “we had to bribe one thousand six hundred and four officials to look the other way. Police, customs, coastguards, mayors of little towns, plus more police …” He shrugged. “You know how corruption spreads, everyone wants a share. Five bucks here, ten bucks there. Essential, yes. Significant, no. It’s small potatoes for little people. Two hundred grand buy half Ukraine. Then, once we start selling tickets, it’s like opening Hoover Dam, whoosh! It’s a tidal wave of money, and the grease just gets lost in the flood.”

  “And our payoff is what?” Nicky asked.

  “Four hundred percent per year. We declare a dividend every quarter. It’s never been less than a hundred percent. And of course your capital investment is secure. Repayment in full, on demand.”

  “If it’s a lottery there’s got to be winners.” Nicky said. “I mean, winners in Ukraine. What’s their percentage?”

  “Nothing. Zero. The big O. We draw so-called winning numbers from the unsold tickets, add fake names, print them in the newspaper.”

  “You put in ten, you take out forty, you get your ten back,” Vito said. “That’s in a year. Plus you strike a blow for freedom and democracy against the Red menace.”

  There was a long silence. Nobody had any complaints about making a patriotic killing.

  “Everything hangs on this genius in Milan,” Nicky said. “I never saw a bum note that didn’t have a wrong feel to it. Wrong smell, sometimes.”

  “The fruits of long experience,” Luis said. “And I shall not be so foolish as to argue with you. All I can do is show you the proof.” He took an envelope from an inside pocket and shook loose a dozen papers and unfolded them. “These are ten-karbovansiv tickets from the Ukrainian State National Lottery. Please examine them.”

  The tickets went from hand to hand, were held up to the light, were sniffed, were scrutinized.

  “Notice the paper quality,” Luis said. “The three different colored inks. The intricate border design. The locomotive pumping smoke, the gentleman with the big and curly beard, the rays of sunlight. Fiendishly difficult to copy, which is why they were chosen. See the watermark, note how the lines vary from thick to thin. Now … some tickets are genuine, some are counterfeit. But which are which?”

  The ten men drifted off to the other end of the room, where they could argue in private. Vito was on his own, making a silver dollar ripple across his knuckles and back again. Luis got a fresh glass of ginger ale. Julie joined him and muttered, “I hope you know what the hell you’re doing.” He smiled. “Never in doubt,” he said. But she had seen that smile before and knew what it meant: damn-all.

  The discussion ended. The men returned. Nicky was in the lead, holding some of the tickets in one hand, some in the other.

  “These three,” he said. “They’re fake. The rest …” He waved the bunch. “These are the real thing.”

  “Decisive. I like that.” Luis took the tickets. “These three are indeed fake.” He threw them on the fire. “Of the others …” He fanned them out, quickly selected two and held them up. “Genuine. All the rest are phony.” They went onto the fire.

  Vito laughed. Nobody else found it funny. Someone said, “What did you see that we didn’t see?”

  “Well, I didn’t look at the detail. Waste of time, the copies are perfect. But the genuine tickets each have a tiny tear in the top right corner. See?” They saw nothing, the tear was too small. “These were bought in Ukraine, and I made that little tear before I gave them to our man in Milan. It’s the giveaway. Without it, I’d be as blind as you.”

  They didn’t like being called blind. Nicky said, “Maybe we should take a trip to Milan. Meet your genius.” There was a rumble of agreement.

  “He would never consent,” Luis said. “How do you think he survives? Not by giving master classes to passing tourists.”

  Stalemate. Nobody moved. The fire ate the last of the tickets.

  “You don’t trust him,” Luis said. “You don’t believe anybody could be that good. Let me show you something. He fools around with US dollar bills sometimes. Just a hobby. I happen to have two five-hundred-dollar bills on me.” He took them from his wallet. “One was made by him in Milan, and one is the real thing. Or maybe both are real. Or maybe neither is. Who knows? Pick a genuine bill, and you can keep it.”

  This was something they felt much more confident about. They passed the bills around and talked quietly, seriously. Finally they reached a decision: this one was good, that one was not. They gave them back. “You’re sure this one is the genuine article?” Luis said. “Convinced? Well, I’m ashamed to say I lied. They’re both counterfeit.” He screwed them up and tossed them in the fire. Julie gasped. “You dumb shit!” she shouted, and threw her glass at him. He caught it one-handed, head-high. She glared at Vito. “That was our milk money, godammit!”

  “Hey, relax, lady,” he said. “We got a quart you can have for free.”

  Luis was wiping splashes of whisky from his face. “Forgive my colleague,” he told the room. “She has spent too long in Ukraine. For her, the fake is now more real than the real.”

  “Enough, already,” Vito said. “You two go watch some TV. I gotta count heads here.”

  An hour later, Luis and Julie left with two hundred thousand in dollar bills, twenties and fifties and hundreds, all packed in white canvas bags with Van Nuys Laundry stenciled on them.

  They drove to Westwood Village and ate Chinese at the House of the Golden Dragon, a place much favored by students, all you could eat for $3.50. Julie chose it.

  “We can afford much better than this,” Luis said. “I know it’s four bucks at the Prancing Peacock, but you get free spring rolls.”

  “You made that up.”

  “Perhaps. Doesn’t mean it’s not true, does it?”

  “Well, hell, nothing’s true. They don’t eat spring rolls in China and they don’t buy lottery tickets in Ukraine, do they? Nothing you say is true. Not a damn thing. Everything you’ve been selling is phony. There are no counterfeit tickets. You’ve been blowing smoke through your ears and calling it macaroni.”

  “The two big bills in the fire were genuine.”

  Julie put down her chopsticks. “A thousand bucks. All we had left. You burned it.”

  “I invested it. I bought their trust with it. They wanted to believe me, I could smell it in the air, but they still needed one little nudge to push them over the edge. If I could turn genuine dollars into phonies—and
they truly believed one of those notes was real—then they’d stop worrying.” He dug into his chow mein.

  “Those notes were real, Luis.”

  “No, no. Couldn’t be. I tossed them in the fire.”

  “So black is white. Which means Operation Bamboozle exists. Also General Bolshevik.”

  “If Vito’s chaps think so.”

  “But you know and I know it’s all a con. And the truth about every con is, it never lasts. Sooner or later it blows up in somebody’s face.” She chopsticked a piece of chicken and ate it before it could get away.

  “I’m rather worried about the general,” Luis said. “Drinks too much, drives too fast, talks about defecting. To France. He wouldn’t like France, would he?”

  “Not if you say so, Luis.”

  “The general needs us. We should leave LA for a while. Vito and Nicky expect me to get their money to Ukraine, don’t they? So we can’t be seen to stay here. Think of somewhere nice to go.”

  “New York,” Julie said. “See the new Broadway shows.”

  They went home, packed a couple of bags, phoned a neighbor and asked their twelve-year-old son to feed Othello, gave the boy the spare house keys and fifty dollars, and drove to the airport. They could afford to fly first class. They told the airline they were Mr. and Mrs. James de Courcy, in case Nicky Zangara inquired.

  Nicky was looking into the fire. “He burned all the evidence,” he said. “How can we check what he says when he goes and burns it? That was too smart. Way too smart.”

  “You got no imagination.” Vito had a large Jack Daniels inside him and he was working on another. “The fact that he burned the paper proves it was funny money. The evidence is in the act. Stop thinkin’ like a goddamn cop.”

  Nicky kicked a burning log for not burning fast enough. “There’s somethin’ wacky about him. He’s not one of us.”